The Extent to Which Fear and Pragmatism were the Major Factors in the Passing of the Great Reform Act

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The Extent to Which Fear and Pragmatism were the Major Factors in the Passing of the Great Reform Act

There were a lot of major factors surrounding the passing of the Great

Reform Act, with a continuous fear of revolution by the radicals and

the collaboration of the working and middle classes. The situation

worsened with the collapse of the Whig government and this led to the,

somewhat pragmatic, eventual passing of the Act in 1832.

One of the reasons why the Great Reform Act was passed was to get rid

of the rotten boroughs. The rotten boroughs meant that by 1831,

Lancashire with a population of 1.3 million had just 14 MPs, while

Cornwall with only 300,000 was represented by 42 MPs. Borough

electorates varied enormously: some like Liverpool had over 5,000

members, but some like Old Sarum literally only had a handful. They

were controlled by the wealthy members of society, usually

aristocrats. They fulfilled a useful purpose in allowing the election

of a promising young MP, but could equally maintain the position of an

unpopular member; these rotten boroughs were common. They wanted to

revise the constituencies in order to make the fast growing industrial

towns have representations in the House of Commons. The extent of

electoral corruption was obvious and was contributory to the passing

of the Great Reform Act.

Another factor was that you had to have property worth 40 shillings

(£2) in order to be eligible for voting. The relative decline in the

value of property meant that the numbers eligible to vote in elections

for county seats had steadily increased. However, this would obviously

not include the working class, so fear of revo...

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...am IV now agreed to the creation of the new peers to solve a

major constitutional crisis. Accordingly, the King asked Grey to form

a ministry four days later. Under sever public pressure, the

anti-reform stance collapsed completely and the threat of the creation

of the new peers was enough to convince the Lords that they had to

give way. Most Tory peers abstained and the Bill on its third reading,

by 106 and 22. On 7th June 1832, the Bill received Royal approval.

Overall, the initial fear of revolution remained throughout the battle

of introducing the Great Reform Act. However, despite anti-reformists

opinions, Britain found itself in absolute catastrophe and action was

needed to be taken. This then resulted in the growing extent of

pragmatism being a major factor over the passing of the Bill, for fear

of revolution.

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